Jadallah Jadallah was shot by a paratrooper unit in the al-Fawar refugee camp. Videos show him abandoned as he pleaded for help, while his family watched helplessly from a distance. Israel is now holding his body. According to the IDF, “a terrorist who posed an immediate threat was identified, the force fired at him and provided first aid”
A 14-year-old boy wounded by gunfire lies on his back in an alley in the al-Far’a refugee camp in the northeastern West Bank. A large group of soldiers walks around him or stands nearby, sometimes less than a meter away (3 feet). At times they glance at him, but usually stand close without looking, as if an object rather than a human being were lying on the ground.
He rolls onto his side and bends his legs, his knees falling outward. He extends one hand and then another. They drop, and then he raises one or two hands again. Neighbors watch from the windows of nearby houses, unable to do anything.
In another movement that seems like a plea for attention and help, he throws his hat toward the soldiers. One soldier kicks it back. He throws the hat again. This time, a soldier gently kicks it so that it remains out of the teenager’s reach. At times, the soldiers fire into the air. On one occasion, they fire toward his mother. When she learns that the wounded boy is her son, she hurries out of the family’s home, 200 meters away (about 600 feet) trying to reach him and beg for his life. Several bullets strike the wall near the exit door, forcing her back.
The wounded boy is Jadallah Jadallah (Jad to his family), born in May 2011. On November 16, his family found itself on two painful lists. Jad became one of 55 Palestinian minors in the West Bank killed by Israeli soldiers in 2025, and one of 77 killed minors whose bodies are being held by the IDF – most of them in morgue freezers – by order of the government. Because his body was not returned for burial, the family still clings to the hope that he is alive, even though four disturbing videos obtained by Haaretz document the final hour of his short life. A few minutes of that hour are described above.
According to the IDF Spokesperson’s website posted at 6:12 P.M. that day, this was an “offensive operation by the Paratroopers’ Battalion special reconnaissance unit (Sayeret Tzanhanim) in the al-Far’a camp, under the Menashe Brigade.”
Camp residents say the soldiers were searching for a wanted man. He was not arrested during the operation and later turned himself in. An earlier video, chronologically preceding the others and obtained by Haaretz, shows three figures at the junction of an alley in the camp leading toward Jadallah’s house. They peek around the corner of a building at the far end of the alley, looking into the street to their left. It is difficult to determine from the footage whether they are children, but in retrospect we know they are Jad and his friends.
One of them runs into the alley. A few seconds later, a second boy leans forward. The friend who had been running with him suddenly runs westward as well. Then two other figures enter the frame from the north. From their body language – holding and aiming rifles – it can be concluded they are soldiers. The third boy runs westward, his back to them.
Another soldier appears, and the children disappear from view. A slight change in the video’s gray tones is probably dust stirred up when something falls to the ground. The alleys are sandy after the IDF tore up the asphalt last year. Eyewitnesses fill in what the video does not show: two of the children managed to escape; Jad fell. Soldiers dragged him several meters into the alley.
The IDF Spokesperson’s statement says that during the reconnaissance unit’s activity in the refugee camp, soldiers “identified a terrorist who was attempting to harm the force. The force fired at him and eliminated the terrorist. There were no injuries to our forces.”
The statement omits the fact that the soldiers fired at Jad when there was no danger to their lives, and that he was not immediately “eliminated.” The third video shows Jad lifting his torso with difficulty, once again extending a hand toward the soldiers, and then collapsing. One sleeve appears soaked with blood. The soldiers continue to move around him. At least two approach him, apparently filming. One fires into the air. Another comes closer, bends down and drops what looks like a stone beside him. Camp residents interpreted this as planting evidence and preparing a justification for the shooting.
Residents say the soldiers prevented a Palestinian ambulance from reaching the scene. “My son was not carrying a rifle, he wasn’t holding a grenade – nothing,” his father, Jihad, said in their home last week. His wife, Safaa, added, “Even if he had been, they should have taken him and treated him. He wasn’t a senior commander. He wasn’t a member of any battalion. They made it seem as if he had gone out to carry out a terror attack.”
The family describes Jad as timid and cautious, someone who always ran away when soldiers appeared and who rarely left the house at all. They mention in passing that, like about half of the camp’s residents, they were forced to leave their home for six months last year during a prolonged army operation, renting an apartment in Salfit, in the northwestern West Bank.
“They say Jad told the soldiers, ‘I’m a kid,'” his mother said, her face contorted with pain. His sister, Shahed, added: “A female soldier was angry at her comrades and said, ‘Why did you shoot? He’s a kid.'”
The houses in the camp are densely packed. The people shut inside them, out of fear of the soldiers, can see and hear everything through the windows. Many of them worked in Israel and understand Hebrew well. If such words were indeed spoken, there were people who could hear and understand them.
Shahed said that after the soldiers took her brother away, the family received a call from the Palestinian local liaison committee saying he was alive. About ten minutes later, the committee reported that it had received a message from its counterpart, the Israeli liaison committee, stating that he had died.
The eldest brother, Qusay, said: “My brother was not killed. We do not believe he was killed. If he was killed, we want the body.” Their mother said that “his younger brothers ask me if he is in a refrigerator.” The daughter expressed fear that an organ had been taken from his body. Her father – an officer in the Palestinian National Security forces – responded: “If he is dead, and if they took an organ from him to save another child, in the eyes of our God that is a great thing.”
Midway through the fourth video held by Haaretz, which runs about six minutes, the door of a khaki-colored jeep enters the frame. The red Star of David marks it as a military ambulance. But Jad had stopped moving at least two minutes earlier. Seconds after the ambulance arrives, a soldier bends over him, appearing to check his pulse and feel different parts of his body. He is wearing blue gloves. If he did anything beyond that, it cannot be seen in the footage.
Toward the end of the video, another soldier appears holding a white sheet – possibly a thermal aluminum blanket. Another carries a rug taken from one of the houses. The video then cuts off. Eyewitnesses say the soldiers carried Jad on the rug and put him in the ambulance.
Jad was taken away on the rug at around 5:35 P.M. Until 5:28 P.M., according to the family, he received no treatment – something also seen by his father and sister, who watched from the second floor, driven frantic by their inability to save him. How long was he left bleeding on the ground? Some say about 90 minutes, claiming he was shot shortly before 4:00 P.M. Others say he was shot around 4:45 P.M., meaning about 45 critical minutes passed while he bled without care. Of those, 11 minutes are documented in three of the videos obtained by Haaretz.
In its response to Haaretz, the IDF Spokesperson expanded on the brief website statement: “A terrorist was identified who threw a concrete block at the force and posed an immediate threat. The force fired at the terrorist to remove the threat, and as a result he was wounded. After verifying that the terrorist was not carrying an explosive device on his body, the force provided him with first aid. The claim that the force did not provide medical treatment is false. A video proving the provision of medical care was sent to the reporter. We are not familiar with the claim that the force placed stones near the terrorist’s head. The incident is under review.”